Border Land Hospitality

By Will Maguire, CHA

In my management style I have developed three basic rules that I apply to all situations. I tried to make these rules simple enough for my employees to remember and easy enough to understand. The key word in that last sentence is ‘tried.’ No matter how much I tried to make them simple and easy, there were still a few employees who didn’t quite catch on. However, when the staff as a whole did catch on, and when they worked in line with the three rules, the service scores started to climb and the overall attitude throughout the hotel improved as well. The idea of the three rules was to give the employees the power to handle as many guest issues as possible.

The first rule, and the most important, is “Do whatever is takes to make the guest happy.” Simple, straight forward, and easy to apply. Once you figure out what will make the guest happy, do that, whatever it is. This gives the employees the power to take action, to actually ‘do’ something. The word ‘do’ prompts action; it gives the person listening, to the command, the indication that some sort of action will be required. They know that they have to do something. The something they are required to do is defined as ‘whatever.’ This opens up the possibilities to an almost endless list of options. It encourages a certain amount of creativity on the part of the employee. They need to determine what possible actions can be performed, what they really need to do. The fact it is ‘whatever it takes’ the employee will have to find out exactly what the problem or issue is in order to know what possible options they can come up with to correct the problem or issue. The last part of that first rule tells the employee what the criteria is for the action they have decided to do. It makes the guest happy. If the action performed does not make the guest happy then it is not the answer to whatever needs to be done.

As with everything we do in the hotel business, the guest has the final word on what is to be done. If the guest is happy then we have done our job, if the guest is not happy then we have missed the mark, we have not done our job. Every action needs to be done with the thought of whether or not the guest will be happy with what we are doing or will this action benefit our guests in some way. This is especially true when we are dealing with a guest problem or issue. However, this rule doesn’t have to be utilized only when confronted with a guest problem, it fits in perfectly with any and all activities which every department in the hotel is doing. Maintenance should not make a repair that will leave the toilet seat slipping and sliding around when sat on. The guest would not be happy riding a toilet seat that reminds them of a rodeo. Housekeeping would not leave a wet towel hanging on the back of the bathroom door when cleaning a check-out room. The guest would not be happy with a pre-used towel in the room when everything is supposed to look like it is fresh and new. A server in the restaurant would not toss a plate of food at a guest like a Frisbee; the porter wouldn’t fling suitcases across the room like a hammer throw in the highland games, and the front desk wouldn’t answer the phone “whadda ya’ want?!” Most of our daily actions are basic common sense while some require a little thought. If we always think to ourselves if this particular action will make the guest happy then we know our operations are designed with excellent guest service in mind.

Earlier I mentioned that sometimes our employees don’t quite catch on to concepts we try to teach them. Let me take a moment to tell you about Lana, a server in the restaurant of one of the hotels I managed. Lana came to the Saturday afternoon training session where I talked about ‘Do what ever it takes to make the guest happy.’ She answered the questions I asked perfectly, she paid attention in the training, she seemed to grasp the idea behind this rule, and she was the most attentive in that particular class.

Well, I guess this new information was lost over the next couple days, she had a day off in there some place, and the evening she was back at work she called me at home to tell me about a guest that was not happy. I realized that the fact she had to call me at home we probably had already lost a customer. If the issue could not be resolved before now, the customer was most likely fuming and had already decided that he was not coming back to our restaurant. So, I did not see any reason why I couldn’t make this a learning experience for Lana.

When she told me about the problem I said to her, “Do what ever it takes to make the guest happy.” Her reply was to begin her story again and I interrupted her by saying, “Do what ever it takes to make the guest happy.” This time she asked me what if the guest wants his meal for free, my answer to her was, “Do what ever it takes to make the guest happy.” Three times I said it and it was the only thing I said to her. I didn’t give her any special instructions, I didn’t give her any advice as to what she might do, I left it in her hands and just reminded her about the rule and that she needs to do what ever it takes. She said to me, “Okay.”

The next day when I came into the office I never heard a word about the issue. What she decided to do took care of the situation. Also, Lana never called me at home again. Plus, she became the most requested server in our restaurant. She soon had regular customers who only came in when she was working, she had higher totals on her tickets, her tips increased, and she was much more confident in her abilities. This didn’t happen because she gave away free food, it happened because her customers saw that she was willing to do what ever it took to make them happy.

By Will Maguire,CHA

I know some managers will hear the rule ‘do what ever it takes to make the guest happy’ and think that giving employees the power to do whatever they want brings up too many variables and could cause more problems that might skim too close to liability issues for management’s comfort. This rule can be modified to be in place as long as the solution is legal and under a predetermined amount of money. But, don’t forget that the whole idea is to get the employees to handle more guest issues quickly without having to make the guest wait while they hunt down a manager to address the issue, especially if the manager will most likely give a refund anyway and assign the employee to process that refund. Why not let the employee automatically do a refund without having the guest stand around and wait? You can place restrictions and limits on the rule, just keep in mind the overall goal. In my experience, the employees already instinctively know when they reach that point and need to call a manager, especially when the second and third rules are invoked.

 Let’s take a look at the second rule I use in my hotels to empower my employees when it comes to guest issues. The second rule is “Do what you need to do, to make the hotel look good.” This opens up to just about anything, anywhere in the hotel and applies to any employee performing any activity. In fact, it could possibly reach beyond the hotel and involve the employee’s personal time off the property. Take a look at this rule in sections.

 “Do what you need to do…” this puts the required action right in the hands of the employee by saying that it belongs to ‘you.’ The responsibility belongs to ‘you.’ Not to another employee, not to the vendor, not to another department, not to the manager, not to the supervisor, it all falls on ‘you.’ And what is it that ‘you’ need to do?  You need to “make the hotel look good.” Think about what the term ‘look good’ implies. Looking good can apply to the physical appearance of the property. From trash and debris lying on the walkways or in the hallways, to finger prints on the glass doors, to a cluttered front desk. Anything that can be done to improve the ‘look’ of the hotel, regardless of location, needs to be done and the person to do it is ‘you.’ Now, I say regardless of location because this same rule must be applied to the back of the house as well as the public areas. Places in and around the hotel, where other employees will be, needs to be maintained in an orderly and clean manner. Think also about the vendors or the repair people we may need to call in from time to time and even the occasional family member who drop in to deliver lunch. They see our back of house areas and we want them to see out hotel looking good, right?

 This leads into another aspect of the term ‘look good.’ Not only do we need our hotel to look good from a physical stand point, but we definitely need our hotel to look good from the stand point of its reputation. The reputation of the hotel needs to be good. This means the local business community and the public community in general needs to think of our hotel in a positive light. The general feeling they get from our hotel whenever they hear it mentioned should invoke good feelings. One of my proudest moments was when the laundry vendor booked a room at my hotel when he had a regional supervisor come into town. This vendor serviced practically all the hotels in the immediate area as well as a number of hotels throughout the city. He spends time in the housekeeping and laundry departments of a large number of hotels. Some of these hotels are classified higher than what my hotel was, being a limited feature hotel. Yet, he wanted his regional manager to stay at my hotel because he saw the back of the house in all these hotels and felt that mine was the cleanest of them all. Not only did the hotel physically look good to him, but it also invoked a very high reputation from somebody who knows what he is looking at. This also set a good reputation for the hotel with his regional manager and his company as a whole. We gained more business all because we did what needed to be done to make the hotel look good.

The hotel’s reputation can be ruined or improved by the comments made at random intervals when we are out taking care of personal business. At the check-out counter of the grocery store, sitting in the barber’s chair, standing in line at the bank, anyplace we are that people know where we work, they are interested in how we feel about the place where we work. If we have good things to say, positive comments to make, then the reputation of the hotel improves among the general public. When these people happen to have friends or family come into town, they will remember the good feelings they had when listening to your positive comment. Always have good things to say.

By Will Maguire, CHA

Alright then, we have our staff taking the bull by the horns and they are doing what ever it takes to make the guest happy while making sure the hotel looks good. The third rule in my trilogy of rules for any situation is, “Don’t do anything to hurt the hotel.” I must confess that this particular rule was not my own. My Director of Operations, who promoted me to my very first general manager position, told me this rule. It was his and I did my best, as a first time GM, to follow his rule as precisely as I could and I believe I did a pretty good job. Later in my career I wanted to expand on his rule while trying to give the whole concept a little more of a positive spin, which caused me to develop the other two rules to compliment the ideas behind this third rule.

Not doing anything to hurt the hotel is actually our safety net. Doing something that might hurt the hotel would include the illegal actions, the seriously negative comments, and the bad actions that could lose the hotel business or damage the reputation of the hotel, all the things that every GM worries about every day. This 'hurting the hotel' part of these rules is what keeps the employees from crossing that line all good managers are concerned about. This rule keeps the other two from getting out of hand; this is the 'check' in the balance of the three rules.

 I have found that by teaching all three rules to my department managers and the line level staff of the hotel and referring to them often, the overall operation of the hotel improves greatly. Once they gain an understanding of the rules and they work within the guidelines the three rules provided, and when they see that management won’t jump down their throats for any effort they make, they become more confident in their abilities to resolve guest issues, they become better and faster at honoring guest requests, they are more efficient in the guest’s eyes because they don’t hesitate to take care of the guest’s needs. In the years I have used these rules as the main part of my management style when dealing with my staff, I have yet to be confronted with a situation or an issue that I could not apply at least one of the three rules. In fact, most of the time two out of the three usually applies. When counseling an employee or a department head, I refer to the three rules. When complimenting an employee or department manager for something good they have done, I refer to the three rules. When reviewing performance evaluations, I refer to the three rules. The rules become the operating culture of the hotel, and that culture is a positive influence of the entire service team.

 I only had limited space here to discuss my ‘three rules for any situation’ but, I am working on this as a topic for my next book. If you have any comments about the three rules, or if you have implemented the three rules and have some information to share with me regarding your successes while using the three rules, please drop me a line and let me know how they work for you and your team.